Heat!
Since I've run out of budget basically due to the increase in price of materials gone up 10 fold in some cases, a lot of stuff is on hold, so I'm looking to add some heat on the cheap. And that goes beyond running my 110k btu bullet heater on kerosene for 3-4 hours to get the temps up a bit.
It's getting chilly, I would like some heat in the garage. Some of you may remember from about 100 pages ago that I put in pex tubing in the concrete. Lots of it.
And since as of yet I have no insulation in the walls, spending a lot of money on heat will largely be wasted. But I've come up with a scheme that just may ease the temps a little bit.
If I put 1000w of solar panels on the roof, an mppt controller with load out, then run that to a 1000w heating element inside a bucket of some sort, then it should make warm water. Then pump that water into the pex tubing into the floor with a circulation pump. Since it's a closed system it wouldn't be net new water.
Now that will only work if the floor doesn't lose more than 1000w of heat by the time the full loop completes. But, if I add another 1000w of panels, and another 1000w heating element, and so on, that should work if I get enough.
The other consideration is, I'm not in the shop in the morning, it is usually early afternoon. So if that thing starts heating at 9-10am, by 2pm I would think it would be decent enough. I'm not expecting 70f, but it would be nice if it wasn't 20f. And not walking on cold concrete. Sun sets at 3-4 and panels drop off, but by that time i should have a decent amount of residual heat stored in the concrete. And for those that don't remember, I have 2" insulating foam on all sides of the pad.
I can do all this for about $150 per 1000w of heat, circulation pump is pretty easy/cheap. I just need to buy or build a tank that will take multiple heating elements.
And what will become of my concrete pad that is heated up and then frozen on a nearly daily basis?